Participation in clinical diabetes trials wanted
20 May 08
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Clinical trials – the controlled testing of the safety and effectiveness of new therapies with lots of patients – is essential to medical science, yet recruiting volunteers can be a problem.
The website, packed with video clips of diabetes patients, is accompanied by a DVD that will be distributed to care centres in England. The aim is to showcase the benefits of taking part in clinical trials so more people will consider signing up.
Professor David MatthewsThere are three problems with undertaking clinical trials. They are recruitment, recruitment, and recruitment
The DVD outlines how to get involved in trials, why it can benefit both the researchers and those who take part, and features many video clips of clinicians, nurses and participants talking about their experiences.
‘There are three problems with undertaking clinical trials,’ says Professor David Matthews of OCDEM and co-Director of the Diabetes Research Network. ‘They are recruitment, recruitment, and recruitment. All other problems pale into insignificance in comparison to recruiting participants.’
Professor Matthews explains that to understand whether a therapy has any effect you need to have several hundred, or better, several thousand people in a trial. ‘To find several thousand, you need to have a network of many centres around the country.’ He believes this new effort to encourage people to get involved will be of huge benefit to the research community and to patients.
The good news is, however, that once they have been persuaded to take part in trials, patients usually find their experience rewarding.
'There’s the feeling that I am involved in extending the frontiers of medicine to improve treatment for other people,’ says John West-Harding, one trial participant. Ragendra Balasingham adds: ‘I get a chance to meet other people that are going through what I am going through.’ Angus Johnson also benefited from being part of a trial. ‘[The doctors] were very proactive in identifying other problems I had which may not [otherwise] have been identified until they were a major problem.’
Professor David Matthews added: ‘Diabetes affects 1 in 25 of the population yet it is a “silent disease” in terms of the amount of coverage it gets. Patients who have taken part in the trials become more involved and interested in the ways therapies can make them feel better, and gain from closer relationships with the doctors and nurses seeing them rather than being one of 100 people they see that day.’
